Sonic Revelations, Sonic Revolutions

As much as it pained me to listen to Phill Niblock’s “Kontradictionaries,” I came out of the experience an entirely new outlook on the power of music/sound. For roughly the first five minutes of the piece, I was able to concentrate fully on internalizing the sounds and achieving a fairly in depth understanding of how they were affecting me. The unwavering persistence and aggression of the music was what eventually made my mind wander. Since the sound was nearly uniform throughout, each time it there was a variation it was easily spotted and appreciated. Even with the variation, the entire piece instilled me with one unchanging emotion: anxiety. For the first five minutes the anxiety was interesting and bearable. After that the consistency of the music allowed me to lose interest somewhat. I was able to force myself to concentrate some and regain my footing in the drone, but I was quick to lose myself again. When the piece became background music to my daydreaming, the anxiousness grew exponentially. Since I wasn’t focusing on what was happening with the music and noticing all of the intricacies, it felt like it was nagging at me over and over. This made it even harder to try to get back into the flow of the music. Eventually the anxiety grew to the point that my whole body was sweating. Even now I’m actually feeling uncomfortable just recalling the memory. So although I may not sit down and listen through the piece again for pleasure, I have the utmost respect for how heavily it affected me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 12:30 pm and is filed under , david, niblock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.